Venice housing entity re-emerging

Friday

Aug 30, 2013 at 12:01 AM

Eric Ernst

What ever happened to Royal Venice? Funny you should ask.

Others around town have been posing the same question, especially after they learned that the all-volunteer, nonprofit builder of affordable housing has lost its tax-exempt status and still has more than $455,000 in its bank account.

Not to worry, president Ed Taylor says. The money's safe. Royal Venice is emerging from hibernation. It's looking for government programs with which to form partnerships. It's contacting the IRS to re-establish its tax-exempt status. And, it's ready to get back into the affordable housing game.

Despite its aristocratic name, Royal Venice had a grass-roots origin.

In 1988, at a time when there were far fewer homeowner assistance programs, Father Esteban Soy of Ephiphany Cathedral and a group of professionals got together to try to help first-time homeowners with down payments.

Royal Venice would loan as much as $5,000, to be repaid at a low interest rate starting a year or so after occupancy.

It adopted the service boundaries of the Venice Area Board of Realtors, whose members cut their commissions and chipped in donations and leads on cheaper homes.

Marlene Merkle, who's been with the board of Realtors for more than 30 years, still has a scrapbook covering Royal Venice's early days.

One 1992 newspaper article quotes then-Royal president Lena Reid, who reported that the organization had run through $35,000 and was out of money.

"We had a great year!" Reid said. "Of course we need funds and having a zero balance means we can't continue, but it also means we are doing what we set out to do -- helping families with their housing."

That Royal Venice eventually came to amass $400,000-plus shows how affordable housing assistance has evolved.

In the 2000s, Royal Venice changed its business model. It shifted from private donations to state grants, offered through sources such as the State Housing Initiatives Partnership.

The nonprofit bought vacant lots, hired retired contractor John Outerbridge to build homes and sold them at cost to qualified buyers, who obtained commercial loans.

The grants awarded administrative fees, and because Royal Venice's volunteers collected no salaries, its treasury grew.

"Royal Venice was a developer, I guess you could call them," says banker David Dettmann, who was president until 2007. "I think we got up to almost 40 homes."

Most were in North Port. Lots cost too much in Venice.

Then the recession hit, and it simply made no sense to build homes. Potential buyers couldn't qualify for loans, and if they could, there were plenty of affordable properties from which to choose.

In 2008, Royal Venice set aside $100,000 to be used to help homeowners avoid foreclosure. By midyear, about $40,000 had been distributed from Osprey to Englewood, according to a news report.

After that, the history gets a bit sketchy.

Guidestar, a service that reports on U.S. nonprofits, says Royal Venice's "exempt status was automatically revoked by the IRS on June 9, 2011, for failure to file a Form 990 for three consecutive years."

Its new accountant, Eric Robinson, attributes the lapse to a misunderstanding about changes in reporting rules. Robinson, who's also working for free, says he hopes to reinstate the tax-exempt status without repeating the entire application process.

Taylor, who assumed the presidency about three months ago, says Royal Venice has donated $10,000 to Habitat for Humanity South Sarasota County and toward a Habitat home being constructed by the board of Realtors.

In the meantime, with lot prices still fairly low and housing prices on the rise, treasurer Brent Dykstra has contacted the Sarasota Office of Housing and Community Development to see if Royal Venice can renew any of its old relationships.

Don Hadsell, office director of the Sarasota Office of Housing and Community Development, welcomes the news.

"They did a real nice job," he says. "They did a lot of nice homes. Then they disappeared off the face of the earth. We could use them again."